AN OLD mobile library has been given a new lease of life during the pandemic, being converted into the 'immbulance', a vaccination centre on wheels.
Staff at Neath Port Talbot council took the term "vaccine rollout" quite literally, designing a vehicle that could be driven around the Swansea Bay University Health Board area, providing jabs to people who are unable to attend appointments at vaccination centres.
More than 2,000 people have been vaccinated in the immbulance since it was sent into action across Swansea and Neath Port Talbot in late February, the health board said.
“These have largely been given to people in communities or groups who, for a variety of reasons including a lack of access to transport, would have found it difficult if not impossible to travel to one of our three Mass Vaccination Centres," said the health board's vaccine programme director, Dorothy Edwards. "This includes people who are homeless and those living in remote areas."
Primark worker Linda Sanders, 66, became the first person to be vaccinated in the "brilliant" immbulance, saying at the time: “My partner was able to drive me here today and it took just 10 to 15 minutes.
"But if I had to go to either Gorseinon or Margam Mass Vaccination Centres, I would probably have to have two taxis.”
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The immbulance has also visited mosques in the two council areas following concerns that fewer people in BAME (black, Asian and ethnic-minority) communities were accepting their vaccine invitations.
Most recently, the former mobile library was parked outside the Port Talbot Mosque, where a local vaccination drive, called the Tell Me More campaign, has sought to dispel myths around the vaccine's contents and safety.
Earlier this year, the mosque's Imam Ashraf received his first vaccination dose in the Fairfield Surgery in Sandfields, Port Talbot, and urged other members of the Muslim community to get their jabs, saying there were “far more” benefits to the vaccine than “damages”.
“We don’t want to lose more of our loved ones," he said at the time. "We have lost many of them. It’s better to protect ourselves and our loved ones.”
This article originally appeared on our sister site The National.
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